Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

I have crossed oceans of time to find you.

The Kingdoms by Natasha Pulley

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Joe Tournier is an amnesiac living in the French colony of England in 1898. His first memory is of stepping off a train platform in London after arriving from Glasgow with no memory of who he is. He has recurring and fleeting memories of a woman named Madeline, a lighthouse, a man on a beach, and a sense that something is wrong. He is taken to an asylum and a doctor diagnoses him with a rare form of epilepsy, one that has afflicted hundreds of […]

The Prestige, but with teenagers and in the Pacific Northwest

Before We Disappear by Shaun David Hutchinson

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My entire frustration with this book is how nonsensical characters’ decisions are. The plot itself is an engaging one, for all that it mimics the beats of The Prestige (side note: basically the entire cast of that movie ended up being superheros or were already). There’s also a lovely, liberal dose of diversity of both race and sexual identity, and while the former has some period appropriate side eye the latter is barely looked at twice. But! A warm and fuzzy 1901 where Black and […]

Oh wait, have you heard this one before?

The King of Infinite Space by Lyndsay Faye

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One year ago. They were pissed, to begin with. A little. Not nearly as much as Horatio is now. Only a shared Viognier bottle over fresh pasta, then a pair of whiskeys so they wouldn’t have to leave the restaurant, abandon the silk ribbons of wind. All the sharp corners sanded off their inhibitions. It was the sort of perfect-weather night that saddens New Yorkers because there are only ten or twelve per year. The city becomes an hourglass, precious grains lost every second. – […]

Affectionate Glares All Around

The Queer Principles of Kit Webb by Cat Sebastian

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The Queer Principles of Kit Webb is Sebastian’s trade paperback debut and I’m excited for the people who get to discover her work with this outing. There were times during The Queer Principles of Kit Webb that I was reminded of the first Cat Sebastian I ever read (her debut) The Soldier’s Scoundrel. There’s a class difference, one character making their living on the wrong side of the law, and a major injury. Plus, I really, really liked it. Sebastian writes steamy, upbeat historical romances […]

When Fan-Fic Sticks the Ending Better then the Original

Any Way the Wind Blows by Rainbow Rowell

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Bingo Just Because: Reader’s Choice Even though I’ve already posted the review to fill in my bingo card, I still wanted to do this out of stubbornness, and because I have another book finished that would have probably ended up in this square anyways. So, Any Way the Wind Blows is the finale of the Simon Snow trilogy, the Harry Potter fan-fic originally created for the stand-alone novel Fangirl, which was actually my introduction to the author Rainbow Rowell. I have to admit, in spite […]

The premise is the only redeeming feature and even that’s somewhat derivative

The Infinite Noise by Lauren Shippen

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Bingo 12: Free I’m going to be up front about this: if this hadn’t been a free download from the Tor.com book club, I’d have been annoyed to have spent any money on it. The story is predictable, and the plot is both mostly lacking and also incomplete. I am reminded in a way of the Goosebumps series; I never really got into that as a kid in part because of how the endings were often not entirely endings. Same problem here. The Infinite Noise […]



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